The Invincible

by Stanisław Lem

  About midway they received radio signals from a small vehicle with a robot drive. It came toward them, raising a heavy dust cloud that followed them like a dirty umbrella. Rohan’s car braked; the other vehicle also came to a halt. Two men were in it: Magdow, a middle-aged technician, and Sax, the neurophysiologist. Rohan switched off the energy screen. This way it was possible to communicate with each other by shouting back and forth.

  After Rohan’s departure they had discovered the frozen body of a man lying in the hibernator of the Condor. They thought they might be able to bring the man back to life, and Sax had brought the necessary instruments from the Invincible. Rohan decided to go along, justifying this sudden change of plans by saying that Sax was traveling without an energy field. The truth was, however, that he dreaded the confrontation with Horpach; he was glad to have an excuse for postponing this unpleasant task. Rohan’s group turned around and chased back, raising big dust clouds.

  There was a great deal of activity around the Condor. Various objects were still dug up from the dunes. Off to one side was a row of corpses, now neatly hidden under white sheets. More than twenty dead bodies had been found. The ramp was in working order, the power supply had been completely restored.

  The approaching convoy had been detected by the men at the Condor, for the dust cloud was visible from quite a distance. A passage into the inside of the energy dome had been readied for them. There they were greeted by a physician, Dr. Nygren, who had refused to examine the man from the hibernator without some professional assistance.

  Rohan availed himself of the privilege of acting here as the commander’s deputy; he accompanied the two physicians aboard. The wreckage that blocked the entrance into the hibernator had since been cleared away. The thermometers registered zero degrees Fahrenheit. The two doctors exchanged meaningful glances. Rohan understood enough about hibernation to realize that this temperature was too high for a reversible death, and on the other hand, too low for hypothermal sleep. There was no indication that this man had been intended to survive his stay in the hibernator. He had most likely stumbled inside by accident—another riddle, just as nonsensical as everything else that had happened on board the Condor. And indeed, as soon as they had changed into thermoprotective suits, turned the handwheel to “open” and lifted up the heavy trapdoor, they saw, stretched out on the floor, face downwards, the body of a man in his underwear. Rohan helped the physicians carry the frozen man to a small upholstered table with three overhead lamps that supplied light without casting shadows. It was not a proper operating table but merely a kind of stretcher for small manipulations that were sometimes carried out inside the hibernator.

  Rohan hesitated before looking at the man’s face; he had been acquainted with many members of the Condor’s crew.

  But this man was a stranger to him. If his limbs had not been so icy cold and stiff, one could have believed that he was simply asleep. His lids were closed. Thanks to the dry, hermetically sealed room, his skin had not lost its natural color, although he looked quite pale. His subcutaneous tissues, however, abounded with tiny ice crystals. Once again the two physicians communicated with each other by meaningful glances. They laid out their instruments.

  Rohan sat down on one of the empty, freshly made up cots that were arranged in two long rows. Everything here was in perfect order. Several times he heard the clicking of some instruments, the whispered consultation between the two medical men. Finally Sax stepped back from the stretcher and said: “There’s nothing else we can do here.”

  “You mean he’s dead,” said Rohan. It was not so much a question he posed as a conclusion he drew, the only possible interpretation of the doctor’s words.

  Nygren had switched on the air conditioning system in the meantime. It was not long before warm air began to stream into the room. Rohan rose from the cot in order to leave the hibernator when he noticed the physician returning to the stretcher. He picked up a small black satchel off the floor, opened it and pulled out that apparatus about which Rohan had heard so much but which he had never seen until now. With slow, almost pedantic movements, Sax began to untangle the cords whose ends had flat electrodes attached to them. He placed six electrodes against the dead man’s skull and fastened them with an elastic band. Then he crouched down and pulled three pairs of headphones out of the satchel. He put on one of these and kept testing the buttons of the machine inside a plastic case. His eyes were closed, his face bore an expression of deepest concentration. Suddenly he frowned, bent over further and stopped fiddling with the button. He quickly removed the earphones from his head.

  “Dr. Nygren—” he said in a strange voice. His colleague seized the earphones in turn.

  “What is it?” whispered Rohan with trembling lips.

  This apparatus was referred to by the space crews as the “corpse-spy.” With it one could “auscultate the brain” of recently deceased persons, or those dead in whom decay had not yet set in, or a body like this one that had been preserved by very low temperatures. Long after death had occurred one could ascertain what the last conscious thoughts and emotions had been.

  The apparatus sent electrical impulses into the brain; there they followed the path of least resistance, moving along those nerve tendrils that had formed one functional entity during the preagonal phase. The results were never too reliable, but it was said to have obtained extraordinarily significant data on many occasions. In cases like the present one use of the “corpse-spy” was clearly indicated.

  Rohan somehow suspected that the neurologist had never really counted on reviving the dead man, but had only come to listen and find out the secrets buried in his frozen brain. Rohan stood without moving, aware of the dull beating of his heart and the dryness in his mouth, as Sax handed him the second set of earphones. Had this gesture not been so simple, so matter of fact, he would not have dared put on the headphones. But he felt encouraged by the steady gaze of Dr. Sax who squatted before the set as he slowly turned the amplifier button.

  At first he heard nothing but the humming of the current. He felt relieved, for he did not really want to hear more. Without realizing it on a conscious level, he wanted nothing more than that the dead man’s brain remain silent.

  Sax straightened up and adjusted Rohan’s headphones. Rohan saw something emerge from the white light that fell on the wall of the cabin: a gray light, dimmed as if by ashes, floating vaguely somewhere at an undeterminable distance. Without knowing why, he tightly squeezed his eyelids together.

  Suddenly he could perceive clearly what it was he had just seen. It looked like one of the corridors inside the Condor; there were pipes running along the ceiling. The passage was totally blocked by human bodies that seemed to move. But it was only the image that was waving to and fro. The people were half-naked; shreds of clothing barely covered them. Their skin was unnaturally white and was sprinkled with dark spots like some kind of a rash. Perhaps these spots were not on the skin but were rather a peculiar visual phenomenon, for they were scattered everywhere: tiny black dots on the floor and the walls. The entire image seemed to fluctuate like a blurred photograph taken through a deep layer of flowing water. The picture seemed to stretch, then contracted again, billowing and swaying.

  Terrified, Rohan forced his eyes open. The image faded away and vanished; only a shadow remained in the brightly lit room.

  Sax began to make some adjustments on the apparatus and Rohan heard, coming from inside him, a faint whisper: “…ala … ama … lala … ala … ma … mama…” Nothing else. Suddenly weird noises came from the earphones: caterwauling, tweeting and crowing; high-pitched sounds that repeated over and over again like some crazy hiccup or some wild horrible laughter, or tortured electronic circuits.

  Sax rolled up the cords and put them back in his bag. Nygren took a sheet and threw it over the dead man, covering up his body and face. The man’s mouth had been tightly shut but now his lips parted slightly, giving his face an enormously surprised expression. It must be the heat, though
t Rohan; it had become quite warm inside the hibernator, or at least it felt warm to him. He perspired heavily, the water trickled down his back. He was glad to see the face disappear under the white sheet.

  “What is it? Why don’t you say anything?” Rohan called out.

  Sax tightened the straps around the plastic case, then stepped closer to Rohan. “Pull yourself together, Navigator!”

  Rohan narrowed his eyelids and clenched his fists. But it did not help. In such moments he would fly into a violent rage, which he could suppress only with great difficulty.

  “Sorry,” he stammered. “But what did that mean?”

  Sax unzipped his protective suit. The bulky garment slid to the ground; nothing remained now of his portly figure. Once again he was the same gaunt, stoop-shouldered man with the narrow chest and delicate hands.

  “I don’t know any more than you do,” he answered. “Maybe even less.”

  Rohan felt lost; he did not understand any longer, but he seized upon the neurologist’s last words.

  “What do you mean, less?”

  “Because I just arrived. I haven’t seen anything besides this corpse. But you’ve been here all day. Doesn’t this image suggest anything to you?”

  “No. Those—they were moving. Were they still alive then? What were those little black spots all over them?”

  “They weren’t moving. That was an optical illusion. These engrams are registered on the brain like a photographic still. And sometimes it happens that several images are present, like in a multiple exposure. But this was not the case here.”

  “But those spots? Are they also an optical illusion?”

  “I don’t know. Anything is possible. But I don’t think so. What would you say, Nygren?”

  Nygren had already peeled off his protective suit.

  “I don’t know either. I’m not sure whether they were artifacts or not. There weren’t any on the ceiling, were there?”

  “The black spots? No. They only covered the dead bodies and the floor. And some of them were on the walls—”

  “If that had been a second projection, they would have been all over the image,” said Nygren. “But you can never be sure with engrams. So much is purely due to chance.”

  “And that voice? That—babbling?” Rohan searched desperately for an answer.

  “One word was perfectly clear: ‘Mama.’ Did you hear it?”

  “Yes, I did. But there was something else. ‘Ala … lala.’ That was repeated over and over again.”

  “Yes, but only because I made a systematic examination of the entire occipital lobe,” said Sax. “In other words, the area that controls acoustic memory,” he explained for Rohan’s benefit, “That’s what’s so unusual here.”

  “Those words?”

  “No. Not those words. A dying man might think of anything. If he had been thinking of his mother, those words would have been quite normal. But his auditory memory bank was absolutely empty. Do you understand?”

  “No, I’m afraid I don’t. What do you mean by empty?”

  “As a rule we cannot obtain any useful results when we search the occipital lobe,” explained Nygren. “Too many engrams there, too many stored words. It’s as if you would attempt to read one hundred books simultaneously. Sheer chaos. But this one,” he glanced over in the direction of the elongated shape under the white sheet, “he had nothing in it. No words, only those couple of syllables.”

  “Yes, you are right. I have examined everything thoroughly from the sensory speech center to the sulcus Rolandi,” said Sax, “And the same syllables kept recurring. These were the only phonemes that have been left in there.”

  “And what happened to the rest?”

  “There aren’t any others.” Sax seemed to lose patience. He jerked the heavy apparatus violently upwards and off the floor, making the leather handle squeak. “They aren’t there and that’s all there is to it. Don’t ask me what happened to all the other words. This man must have totally lost his acoustical memory bank.”

  “But how about the image?”

  “That’s something entirely different. This he saw. He did not even have to understand what he perceived. Just like a camera that does not comprehend but still registers whatever object you aim it at, I have no idea whether he understood it or not.”

  “Could you help me with this, please, Nygren?” The two physicians carried their gear out of the híbernator, and the door fell shut behind them.

  Rohan was alone in the room. He felt so desperate that he stepped over to the table, flung back the white sheet, unbuttoned the dead man’s shirt and carefully examined his chest. He trembled when he touched the body, for the skin had become supple again. As the tissues were thawing out, a general relaxation of all the muscles had taken place. The head, which until now had been propped up in an unnatural position, had sunk down limply. Now it seemed indeed as if he were sleeping. Rohan searched the body for evidence of some mysterious epidemic, some kind of poisoning or insect bites, but he could find nothing. Two fingers of the left hand spread apart and a small, gaping wound became visible. A few drops of blood began to ooze out of the torn flesh, and began to drip on the white foam rubber cover of the table. That was more than Rohan could stand. He did not even bother to pull the sheet back over the corpse; he ran out of the cabin, pushed aside the men who stood in his way and rushed toward the main exit as if he were being pursued. He was stopped by Jarg in the airlock, who helped him strap on the oxygen gear and pushed the mouthpiece between Rohan’s lips.

  “You didn’t find anything, Navigator?”

  “No, Jarge. Nothing, nothing at all.”

  He was unaware of the others beside him as he descended in the elevator. Outside the motors howled. The storm had grown stronger; sand clouds whizzed past and pelted the rough surface of the Condor’s hull.

  Suddenly Rohan remembered something. He walked over to the stem, raised himself on his toes and palpated the thick metal. The armored plate felt like rock, old weathered rock, dotted with hard nodules. Over near the transporters he noticed the tall figure of engineer Ganong, but he did not even try to ask him what he might think of that strange phenomenon. The engineer would know no more than he did himself: namely, nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  He rode back in the largest vehicle, together with a dozen other men. From his seat in the far corner of the cabin, he heard their voices as if from a great distance. Terner brought up the question of poisoning, but he was shouted down.

  “Poisoned? With what? All the filters are in top shape, the water supply untouched, oxygen tanks all full, an abundance of food…”

  “Did you see what the man looked like that we found in the navigation room?” asked Blank. “I used to know him. But I would never have recognized him if I hadn’t seen his signet ring.”

  Nobody answered. Back at the Invincible Rohan went directly to Horpach, who had been kept up to date on everything via television and the oral reports of the group that had returned earlier. They had also brought along with them several hundred photos. Unconsciously, Rohan was relieved that he did not have to describe to the commander what he had seen.

  The astrogator gave him a piercing glance and rose from the table where a large map of the area was spread out and partially covered by stacks of photographs. They were alone in the large command center.

  “Pull yourself together, Rohan,” he said. “I can sympathize with the way you feel right now, but we need cold reason, a clear head, no emotions. We’ll get to the bottom of this damned story.”

  “But they had every imaginable safety device: energo-robots, laser beam protectors and particle throwers. The big antimatter mortar is right there in front of the ship. They had all the same things to protect themselves that we do,” said Rohan in a toneless voice. He slumped down into a chair. “Forgive me.”

  The astrogator took a bottle of cognac from a small cupboard.

  “An old home remedy. Sometimes it does a lot of good. Drink that, Rohan. A long time ago
people used this on battle fields.”

  Rohan took the drink and swallowed it in one gulp.

  “I checked the counters of all the energy aggregates,” he said in a reproachful tone. “The crew was never attacked. They never fired a single shot. They simply, simply—”

  “Went stark raving mad,” completed the unruffled commander.

  “If only we could be sure of that! But how could that happen?”

  “Did you see the log book?”

  “No. Gaarb took it along with him. Do you have it here now?”

  “Yes, I do. There’s the date of landing and only four entries, concerning the ruins, the same ones you men examined, and—the flies.”

  “What flies?”

  “I don’t know. This is the exact text here…”

  He picked up the open book from the table.

  “ ‘No sign of any life on land. Composition of the air…’ Then the result of the air analysis follows. But then—here it is: ‘At 18:40, the second armored patrol unit returned from the ruins. They encountered a local sandstorm with strong activity of atmospheric electrical discharges. Could restore communication by radio despite these disturbances. The patrol reports large swarms of tiny flies…’ ”

  The astrogator put down the book.

  “And what else? Why don’t you go on?”

  “That’s all there is. This is the end of the last entry.”

  “And there’s nothing after that?”

  “You had better look at the rest of this yourself.”

  He pushed the log book over to Rohan. The page was covered with illegible scrawls. Rohan inspected the crazy doodling with amazement.

  “This one here looks like a B,” he said softly.

  “Yes. And this one like a G, a capital G. As if a small child had tried to write this. Don’t you agree?”

  Rohan was silent. He still clutched the empty glass in his hand; he had forgotten to put it down on the table. He was thinking of the ambitions he had harbored until recently, of his dream to himself become commander of the Invincible some day. Now he was grateful that he did not have to decide what the future fate of this expedition should be.